text:
Identifying and illuminating live Grateful Dead shows (and shows by band members) that are unknown or poorly documented.
Monday, August 31, 2009
March 10-15, 1967, Whisky A-Go-Go, San Francisco, CA: The Grateful Dead (canceled)
View Larger Map
I have since changed my mind about these gigs, having found more evidence. My general points still stand, but I now think the Grateful Dead played the SF Whisky through March 15, 1967--see here
A thoughtful commenter on my post about the San Francisco Whisky reminded me of the scheduled performance by The Grateful Dead at the San Francisco Whisky-A-Go-Go from March 10 through 16, 1967 (Friday through Thursday). I was aware of this event, but I completely dropped the ball in mentioning it. I take some solace in the fact that I am fairly certain that the shows never occurred, which is how I drew the conclusion that the SF Whisky did not last until March of that year. However, since I never explained it, I could hardly have expected anyone to follow my reasoning. I will attempt to rectify this with the current post.
To briefly recap earlier posts, the world famous Whisky-Go-Go in Hollywood opened on January 11, 1964. It drew its name from a disco in Paris, and there already was a similarly named, though unrelated Whisky-A-Go-Go, in Chicago (on Rush and Chestnut). The Hollywood Whisky entrepreneur, Elmer Valentine, seems to have allowed or licensed the name and "concept" to other operators. The San Francisco Whisky-A-Go-Go, now thoroughly forgotten, opened in April, 1965 and seems to have lasted until early 1967. It was located at 568 Sacramento (at Montgomery), sort of near the Financial District but somewhat far from the action on North Beach. The Doors, along with The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, played some gigs at the SF Whisky in February of 1967, but although they were scheduled for two weeks, after two days of tiny crowds The Doors handed off their gig to The Wildflower. The Doors, at least, reported that the venue had gone from a "Go-Go" club, with scantily dressed girls dancing to the music (the Hollywood model) to a topless club, with topless waitresses, a pretty common business practice in the Bay Area at the time.
Most Grateful Dead chronologies, including Deadlists and Dead.net, list March 10-16, 1967 shows for the Dead at the Whisky in Hollywood. This flies in the face of the fact that the surviving poster clearly indicates that the Dead were scheduled to play at the San Francisco Whisky (h/t to commenter psychlops). The book The Grateful Dead: The Illustrated Trip gets the location correct, although they do not comment on the shows themselves. In any case, most chronologies correctly suspect that the shows did not occur. In order to understand why this is the most plausible scenario--over and above the fact that no surviving tapes, photos or eyewitness accounts exist--we need to discuss the peculiar backstory of the Love Conspiracy Commune.
In 1966, the San Francisco underground exploded into the light, with local bands, drugs and scenes suddenly making waves in the National and Local press. All sorts of people flocked to San Francisco, some of them musicians, some of them future hippies, and some of them looking to make a buck. By 1967 a trickle had become a flood, and what was once a local happening was turning into a conflict between commercial potential and cultural authenticity. This tension would peak at the Monterey Pop Festival in the Summer, but the fault lines were already clear. Although Bill Graham and Chet Helms were the best known promoters in San Francisco (then and now), plenty of other people and groups put on concerts and happenings.
The Love Conspiracy Commune is usually known only from posters, having presented four events in San Francisco:
February 14-27, Whisky A-Go-Go (568 Sacramento): The Doors/Peanut Butter Conspiracy
The Doors are replaced by The Wildflower from February 16 onwards.
March 3, 1967, Winterland (Post and Steiner): Love/Grateful Dead/Moby Grape/Loading Zone/Blue Crumb Truck Factory "The First Annual Love Circus"
March 6, 1967, 8th and Irving Streets: The Love Conspiracy Commune Presents A Psychedelic Happening
No specific bands are mentioned in the poster, but Liqour, Beer and Sandwiches at low prices figure prominently in the poster.
March 10-16, Whisky A-Go-Go (568 Sacramento): The Grateful Dead
Who were The Love Conspiracy Commune, and how did they appear on the scene so suddenly to book rising underground stars like The Doors, The Grateful Dead and Moby Grape, at an established (if struggling) venue and a major hall (Winterland)? The one specific account of the Love Conspiracy Commune comes from the excellent book by Rolling Stone writer Charles Perry, Haight Ashbury: A History (Rolling Stone Press 1984). Perry writes in detail about a conflict about the March 3 show at Winterland. Local politics were too complicated to go into here, but suffice to say there was tension between those who felt that the scene should stay free or at least cheap, and those who saw it as a commercial bonanza. A sort of collective called The Diggers protested the show for being too expensive ($3.50, pricey at the time).
Perry details a complicated confrontation (p.150-151) in which The Diggers ended up picketing the Winterland show, and The Dead refused to play unless the picketers got in for free. The promoters relented, and some picketers were let in, though apparently not all. Amongst the various broadsides passed back and forth
"One of the group, said the Diggers, had admitted that the Love Conspiracy Commune was backed by "some mob." The mob was a group of dealers from the University of North Carolina who jokingly called themselves the "Chapel Hill Mafia" (p.150)."
While this accusation seems like the sort of criticism that angry ideologues hurl at each other, Perry points out later (p.189) that a Methedrine/DMT lab associated with the Love Conspiracy Commune, on Baker Street (in Pacific Heights), was busted on May 3, so the Commune may indeed have had some shady underpinnings.
The March 6 poster is interesting too. It promises a "Happening" with no specific bands, and makes clear that "Liquor, Beer and Sandwiches" will be available. While hardly illegal, this is clearly an effort to turn an Acid Test into a profitable dance party--dare I call it "A Rave"--and it too must not have gone over well in The Haight. Of course, I have never read or heard a single thing about the March 6 event, so I do not know what happened.
However, by the time of the scheduled March 10-16 Whisky event with the Dead, the "Love Conspiracy Commune" had already caused an ugly rift with the Haight community, and put the Grateful Dead in the middle of a political dispute. The Dead were always comfortable with chaos, but shied away from conflict, and I can't imagine them wanting to play a downtown club with topless waitresses for an out-of-town group who had already shown poor judgment at best.There is no record of the Grateful Dead shows at The Whisky, other than the poster, and I have no reason to think they played the gigs.
My own theory about the Love Conspiracy Commune is that they were connected to drug dealers of some kind, who were looking to make a splash quickly (perhaps to hide money). They blew into San Francisco and took over the booking of an available club, The Whisky A-Go-Go, not realizing it was in the wrong part of town and antithetical to the local scene. They seemed to have the ready cash to book a big event at Winterland, too, but they seemed to have drastically misjudged the local participants, who were still devoted to events that reflected the community as it was perceived, and not ready to fully exploit it commercially. The "Happening" on March 6 that advertises refreshments is actually the most jarring note, and a sign that the San Francisco scene still had an underground feel to it, even if it was slowly conceding ground to commercial realities.
The Peanut Butter Conspiracy/Wildflower shows went through February 27, and I have never seen an ad for an SF Whisky show other than the March 10-16 Dead poster. Its my belief that the SF Whisky had closed by March 10, if not even sooner after February 27, as another misguided enterprise from The Love Conspiracy Commune.
Crossposted on Rock Prosopography 101
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Hart Music, 894 Laurel Avenue, San Carlos, CA
This is an ad for Hart Music, the drum store Mickey Hart managed along with his Father Lenny Hart, at 894 Laurel Avenue in San Carlos. I have speculated elsewhere about whether Mickey was playing with any bands while managing the store from 1965 to late 1967, when he joined the Dead after jamming with them at The Straight Theatre on September 29.
The source of the ad is a book called The SF Band ID Book, an effort to provide a sort of "phone book" for agents or others looking to hire bands. The book, about 40 pages long, features pictures, profiles and contact addresses for San Francisco and Bay Area bands circa Fall 1966. The most well-known bands, such as The Dead, Big Brother or Quicksilver have been profiled many times, but the Band ID book is one of the few sources for photos of groups like The Canadian Fuzz or The Generation.
There are also a few ads from various purveyors of goods and services. Its a nice irony that Hart Music is advertising in the book, but its also good business, since many of their clients would have been in the book also. I do note from the ad that Hart Music seems to have a San Francisco address also, at 317 Columbus, as I have never heard anything about a San Francisco branch of the store. It is interesting to note the display in the ad, as well, as it does remind me of the Grateful Dead drum-percussion set up of the late 1970s--all that's missing is a kit for Billy.
Friday, August 14, 2009
December 18, 1965: The Big Beat, Palo Alto--Lost and Found
One of the principal events in the founding of the Grateful Dead was Ken Kesey's Acid Test at the Big Beat Club in Palo Alto on December 18, 1965. Tom Wolfe wrote about it in Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and among many other remarkable events it was where Owsley Stanley introduced manager Rock Scully to the Grateful Dead, and where Hugh Romney--known today as Wavy Gravy--first got on the bus, too. However, the location or even the nature of The Big Beat club remained shrouded in mystery. As a Palo Alto native, I found it odd that such a seminal location had gotten lost in the mists of time. A search of the regular sources (Dennis McNally, Rock Scully, etc) did not reveal the location, and indeed there were many contradictions. I have been in email contact with people who attended the event, and they themselves could not recall the exact location of The Big Beat.
Determined newspaper research finally revealed the location of The Big Beat (the article and ad above are from the June 24, 1966 edition of the San Mateo Times). I was even more startled to go to the actual site and discover that the building at 998 San Antonio Road, Palo Alto, pictured above in my photo (from August 7, 2009), apparently remains intact. While the well-kept building is now vacant, it still looks very much like the 1960s pizza parlor and dance club where the Dead played an acid test. As a result of my research, the history of The Big Beat and its peculiar relation to the Grateful Dead can now be clarified.
The Big Beat was the San Francisco Peninsula's first "rock" club, modeled somewhat on the style of venues like the Peppermint Twist in New York City. Owner Yvonne Modica, quite an interesting figure in her own right, had been a succesful restaurant and night club entrepreneur in the Bay Area since the 1950s. California liquor laws allowed restaurants to serve beer and wine, so by serving pizza the club could offer beer, without having to have a full liqour license. Another California anomaly allowed 18 year old adults in such establishments, although the drinking age was 21 (essentially to allow College Juniors to bring Freshman dates), and in any case the 25-and-under audience for The Big Beat was mostly a beer-drinking crowd anyway.
San Antonio Road was in the far Southeast corner of Palo Alto, quite far from Stanford University and the bohemian downtown scene that had spawned Jerry Garcia, Joan Baez and others. In fact the location of the club, in a then deserted industrial district near Highway 101, insured that most of the customers probably came from Mountain View, Los Altos and Sunnyvale as much as Palo Alto. The groups featured were local combos who played dance music, probably with a mixture of British Invasion, Surf and R&B (i.e. Motown) covers. The focus would have been on dancing and meeting members of the opposite sex, with beer and music for lubrication.
According to Yvonne Modica's obituary, one of the innovations of The Big Beat was a "breakfast show" from 2 to 6 am on Saturday and Sunday mornings, where no liquor was served. Apparently musicians would finish their other gigs, and come to jam and hang out until the early hours. Breakfast shows were a regular feature of Jazz clubs in San Francisco and later there were a number of rock or soul breakfast shows around the Bay Area, including at Winchester Cathedral in Redwood City, Frenchy's in Hayward or Modica's other club, The Trip in San Mateo, which opened later in 1966.
Ironically enough, The Big Beat's lasting fame came the weekend before it opened, when Ken Kesey's crew rented the place for a party, and The Grateful Dead played at The Acid Test. Hard as it may seem to grasp today, LSD was perfectly legal, and people drank electrified kool-aid and raved the night away. The cops did not like Kesey's Pranksters, and when they found out about an event they hovered around, hoping to bust people for pot (then a serious felony), but LSD use was legal and open.
Interestingly, someone who attended recalls two stages on opposite sides of the building (a common arrangement, making it easy to switch over to a new band) and an all-girl band who alternated with the Dead. The identity of this girl group remains a mystery, and my eyewitness readily concedes that his memory may be faulty and he simply could have imagined the other group. Anyone with foggy memories or insights about the identities of this all-woman should contact me or post in the comments (and to answer the first question, the Ace Of Cups, the legendary all-female psychedelic band, had not formed yet).
Since December 18 was a Saturday, presumably The Big Beat opened on Monday (Dec 20) or Tuesday (Dec 21). I know the club was open at least until Spring 1968, as I have seen a poster (advertising Charlie Musselwhite on March 24, 1968). Until Tom Wolfe published Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, the Big Beat Acid Test was known only to those who were there and a few other friends. However, although The Big Beat continued to exist, it dropped completely off the psychedelic radar.
According to one of the members of the downtown proto-hippie crowd, a club like The Big Beat was not only far from downtown--meaning you had to have a car to get there--but the beer drinking, go-go dancing scene was for twenty-somethings who worked at Lockheed, not budding artists who wanted to drop out of society. As a result, while The Big Beat seems to have been a popular enough establishment in 1966-67, people who went to The Big Beat didn't go to the Fillmore, and people who went to The Fillmore didn' t want to see anyone who played at The Big Beat.
The Big Beat seems to have closed around mid-1968, and its sister club, The Trip, in San Mateo (at 4301 El Camino) was open for about a year from mid-1966 to mid-1967. As Fillmore groups became more popular in the suburbs, going to a faux psychedelic nightclub to buy drinks became less appealing. The Big Beat receded into history, but the building remarkably remains intact.
Googling "Palo Alto" "The Big Beat" and other relevant terms will turn up a variety of incorrect locations for the club. The building that used to house the Keystone Palo Alto (a former supermarket at 260 South California) has been identified as the Big Beat, and a now demolished building on Homer Lane has been identified as the Big Beat also. I have gotten to the bottom of the story of the latter building, and there are reasons to confuse the Homer Lane building with The Big Beat, but that is the subject of another project. The actual Big Beat club remains intact in Southeast Palo Alto, a peculiar beacon to a distant past.
Palo Alto geographical note: San Antonio Road is actually the frontage road off the larger San Antonio Avenue, and you have to access San Antonio Road off East Charleston.
Crossposted at RockProsopography101.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
May 1964, Noncommissioned Officers Club, Tyndall Air Force Base, Panama City, Florida: Jerry Garcia, Sandy Rothman, Scott Hambly
Dennis McNally describes Jerry Garcia's cross-country bluegrass odyssey with Sandy Rothman in great detail (pp.70-73). In the early Summer of 1964, Jerry and Sandy drive in Jerry's Corvair, traveling with the White Brothers to St. Louis, and then onwards to visit Neal Rosenberg in Indiana. For a break, they drive to Florida to visit Berkeley friend Scott Hambly, a former member of Berkeley's first bluegrass band, The Redwood Canyon Ramblers. Hambly was in the Air Force, but Rothman and the short-haired Garcia spends a few days in Florida picking with their old friend.
While the trip to the Air Force base is just one stop on a lengthy trip—Garcia goes on to Bean Blossom, and then Pennsylvania, where he meets David Grisman—it is generally unremarked that McNally identifies Jerry Garcia's first out-of-California gig. McNally writes "The three of them [Garcia, Rothman and Hambly] even played a show at the Noncommissioned Officers Club at Tyndall, but a few days of the vicious insect life of Florida drove Jerry and Sandy to Dothan, Alabama to hear the well-known players Jim and Jesse McReynolds."
There were many Southerners in the Armed Services, and Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs had been Grand Ole Opry stars in the 1950s, so plenty of Airmen would have been at least generally familiar with bluegrass music. The trio of young Californians would probably have been fairly well received by whatever modest crowd was there. Given the lengthy history of Jerry Garcia's performances throughout America, however, its interesting to contemplate that his first out-of-state performance was at an Air Force base in Florida.
While the trip to the Air Force base is just one stop on a lengthy trip—Garcia goes on to Bean Blossom, and then Pennsylvania, where he meets David Grisman—it is generally unremarked that McNally identifies Jerry Garcia's first out-of-California gig. McNally writes "The three of them [Garcia, Rothman and Hambly] even played a show at the Noncommissioned Officers Club at Tyndall, but a few days of the vicious insect life of Florida drove Jerry and Sandy to Dothan, Alabama to hear the well-known players Jim and Jesse McReynolds."
There were many Southerners in the Armed Services, and Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs had been Grand Ole Opry stars in the 1950s, so plenty of Airmen would have been at least generally familiar with bluegrass music. The trio of young Californians would probably have been fairly well received by whatever modest crowd was there. Given the lengthy history of Jerry Garcia's performances throughout America, however, its interesting to contemplate that his first out-of-state performance was at an Air Force base in Florida.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)


text:
couscous, watercress and salmon cakes
with watercress and apple salad
- ¼ cup (40g) wholemeal couscous
- ¼ cup (60ml) boiling water
- 400g skinless salmon fillets, chopped
- 2 cups (30g) watercress sprigs, roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons chopped dill
- 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon rind
- 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- ½ cup (125ml) buttermilk
- 1 Granny Smith (green) apple, thinly sliced
- 2 cups (30g) watercress sprigs, extra
- cracked black pepper, to serve
- Place the couscous and boiling water in a heatproof bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set aside for 5 minutes or until all the water has absorbed. Using a fork, fluff up the grains.
- Place the salmon in a food processor and process until very finely chopped. Place the salmon, watercress, half the dill, the lemon rind, salt and couscous in a bowl and stir to combine. Shape ¼ cup of the mixture into a patty and repeat with remaining mixture to make 8 patties. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat and cook the patties, in batches, for 2 minutes each side.
- Place the remaining dill, buttermilk, salt and pepper in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Place the apple and watercress in a separate small bowl, add the dressing and toss to combine. Serve the salmon cakes with the apple and watercress salad. Serves 4.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
member since February 02, 2007
To anyone who really cares it Rachael in the not-so-great world of relty. Thought i get more nik-names then fly-paper gets flys.
I current doing the art thing at Uni, my work there a wee bit differnt then my comic, as in I dont set my comic on fire…
I live in England and put up with the rain.
I cant think of what eles to say so im done. Cho all.
Comics By TheTopHat
- Real Life |
- 73 pages |
- last: July 6 2011 |
- 0 likes
Comics Assisted By TheTopHat
No comics.
Comics Recomended By TheTopHat
Detective Urufu hasn't spoke with his family for ages... and that's not an understatement! Leaving them and his past behind Urufu has tried to find peace and a new future from his family's legacy of blood as assassins, but its seems they want a reunion.
An angel and demon are forced to live together in a rare deal between Heaven and Hell.
A demon possessed killer gets a glimpse of what life could be like free from his Master...but freedom, like all things in life, is difficult to attain and even more difficult to maintain. Includes both the first and second incarnations of the comic.
Mostly my own slightly warped view on Life, Death, and the world in general.. Not really, this follows the lives of Death (Steve) and Life (Bobby) Along with the other mythical/magical beings that clutter up the place
Follow Lizzy, a bored teenager living in a strange hollow world, as she sets out for Urbia city, the land of absolute freedom... or is it? visit http://comics.cyberneticevilstudios.com for the interactive flash version!
Lola is the story of a sad, sad 13 (now 14) year old girl, who lives with her eccentric grandmother. After just entering junior high school, Lola begins to make new friends and go about life like every other normal kid...of course "normal" is relative.
Pinky TA is a diesel-punk comic set in an alternative version of the 20's. It features the sexy Pinky, war, blood, steel, and fire!
People are stupid, why would magic change that? Practice Carefully. Spell responsibly. Now updateing M-W-F
Huh?! You mean this isn't a sprite comic?! I'm leaving!!!
TheTopHat's friends
forum topics started
Videos Shared By TheTopHat
No videos.
Ryan McLelland at 4:05PM, July 14, 2007
Love the comic, love the art, love the hair, love the tophat...
F_Allen at 2:59PM, May 2, 2007
cheers for the add mate, and the fav :D


text:
Mason keychain - leather with oval medallion
$ 12.95
Mason leather key chain with oval fob medallion. Our leather fob key chains are a long time best seller. They feature a leather flap and a die-struck brass medallion with the organizational shield.
- has a round key ring and a trigger release key ring
- size: 3" long


text:
The SB200H is less than 7 1/2 inches wide and weighs 1 1/2 pounds.
Toronto, Canada (February 4, 2014) -- Building on the success of the Traynor Small Block Series bass combos launched in 2013, Yorkville Sound now adds two new lightweight and ultra compact bass heads to the line.
Traynor Small Block bass heads are built for the travelling musician. At less than 7 1/2 inches (20cm) wide and weighing under 1.5lbs (680g), the SB200H is small in stature, but big on tone. Designed to withstand the rigors of the road, the SB200H is built using an all-metal chassis with front mounted handles to protect the knobs and jacks. A combination Speakon - 1/4-inch speaker output jack ensures the SB200H is included for maximum convenience.
The 500 watt SB500H delivers massive tone from a surprisingly small and compact source. An all metal chassis, Speakon output, effects loop, defeatable limiter, XLR Direct output (selectable pre or post) and a master volume control ensure a full feature set despite its diminutive size.
SB200H 200 Watt Ultra Compact Head – MSRP $349.00 US (MSRP $349.00 CDN)
SB500H 500 Watt Compact Head – MSRP $649.00 US (MSRP $549.00 CDN)
For more information:


text:
Zoo Bflo - Spun Polyester Square Pillow
Regular price $21.87
Unit price per
Room accents shouldn't be underrated. These beautiful indoor pillows in various sizes serve as statement pieces, creating a personalized environment.
.: 100% Polyester cover
.: 100% Polyester pillow included
.: Double sided print
.: Concealed zipper
.: Note: Pre-constructed item. Size variance +/- 0.5"


text:
Unique Mothers Day Gifts and Assisted Living at Home
Mother's Day is this weekend and it is crucial to show the woman who raised you how special she is and how much you cherish her. It can be tempting to go the predictable and easy route of buying flowers from the local florist. Having them delivered from a long distance is also special, however it is lacking imagination. Here are some unique Mother's Day gifts that are sure to wow her and make her feel like the important and wonderful woman that she is.
One way to show Mom appreciation is to request that she take a seat and enjoy a relaxing pedicure at her favorite nail salon. Taking the time to pamper herself is most likely a luxury and will the gift of time away from responsibilities will be a special gift. Add in a glass of wine for extra credit!
Another unique Mother's Day gift is to order home cooked and healthy meal plans to be delivered to her door. The meal planning services available are much tastier and use more whole ingredients than ever before. An internet search for local home delivery food services will surely bring up something that is tasty and good for her. Not having to figure out what to prepare for dinner for a few weeks is an added bonus.
Mother's Day is the perfect time to show Mom how much she means to you. Photo books created online using memories created together and of her children and grandchildren are surefire ways to make her grin from ear to ear. An unexpected mail delivery of her happy family on the glossy pages of a book will surprise and delight. Add in the moments posted on social media. Keep those memories available for a lifetime.
When all is said and done, most moms will say that they would love to spend time with the ones they love most on Mother's Day. While spending money on the perfect gift would seem ideal, it is often brunch, visiting, and sharing stories that will most light up her eyes. Take the time to call her, visit her in her home or take her out for the afternoon. The most important things in life are not actually things; they are experiences, so why not make Mother's Day a special day filled with laughter and time spent together with the ones she loves most.
If you would like to learn more caring assisted living at home, along with the many benefits of professional in home elderly care or dementia and Alzheimer's care, call Senior Helpers of Santa Barbara to speak to a senior care specialist today 805-687-7777! The compassionate senior care specialists at Senior Helpers can also guide you through the process of receiving the Veterans Administration Aid and Attendance Benefit if your elderly loved one is a veteran. In home senior care allows your loved one to stay in the comforts of their own home for as long as possible while receiving the level of care they need. Senior Helpers of Santa Barbara provides a wide range of services including Alzheimer's and dementia care, personal assistance, companionship, and so much more to all areas of Santa Barbara, Goleta, Lompoc, Santa Ynez, and Carpinteria, California.


text:
Let's jump right on in, shall we?
In case you missed it, this is an election year in America (wink).
So, what am I going to do to elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?
I'm going to work as if my rights are on the line.
That means I knock on one more door, I make that extra phone call, I nag my friends and family members to make sure their asses are registered and know where their polling place is…I volunteer, even though I'm tired…I stuff envelopes, even though I'd rather be [insert any of the many things I set aside during an election year].
I'm going to teach…
…and educate my community about reproductive justice and that there are people who appropriate the language and tactics of the Civil Rights movement so that they can erect anti-choice versions of the White Citizens Council and bar black women from the full range of reproductive health care.
I'll be educating my sisters and brothers on the vote, why they should vote, and how many people who claim to care about the souls of black folk are in reality allied with forces that would deny the black vote by any means necessary…people who gleefully disparage black women even as they claim ownership, like the plantation masters of old, over our wombs, our bodies…and, should we fail to be vigilant, eventually our selves.
I'll be resisting…
…any and all attempts to define, examine, objectify, indict, blame, shame, mock, exploit, and control me.
And I will be voting.
Because elections matter.
Because the most dangerous place for my rights is in the hands of my oppressor.
And because woman + vote = power.


text: Are you a frequent flier at NDYC? If you answered yes, then you might be interested in purchasing a Youth Centre Membership. Or perhaps you would prefer to drop in once in a while. Check out our fee schedule by clicking HERE ask a staff member for more information. We look forward to seeing you at NDYC!


text:
Yahoo Must Search For A Clear Focus, Analysts Say
Yahoo's future is up in the air. Earlier this week, the Internet company's board of directors ousted its chief executive officer, Carol Bartz, who was hired two years ago to try to revitalize Yahoo.
Though it is still very profitable, Yahoo has been losing its relevance, and it is less clear where the company is headed.
Gregory Thune, an industrial designer in San Francisco, not far from the company's Sunnyvale campus, represents one of Yahoo's biggest problems: He's never once used Yahoo.
"I think I mistakenly landed on the Yahoo page maybe once in the last 10 years," Thune says. "But I get through my life and I answer the questions that I need to answer, and I search things ... without them. I don't even kind of know what they do anymore, honestly. I don't know what their main focus is."
And that, in a nutshell, is Yahoo's challenge.
A Quirky, Profitable Brand
Yahoo is tremendously old by Internet standards. It started 17 years ago, doing Web searches, and evolved into an online portal — a central place for accessing email, news and instant messages. Later, the company ventured into online entertainment.
Yahoo is an acronym. According to its official history, it stands for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle." The name, like its corporate brand, was quirky by design. For a time, it advertised itself on television using what came to be a familiar yodel jingle.
The branding worked. The company is very profitable and generates more than $6 billion in annual revenue.
To this day, Yahoo has a gigantic Internet audience. According to comScore, a company that tracks Web traffic, Yahoo's monthly U.S. audience is still bigger than that of Microsoft or Facebook.
But it's slipping by other measures. Compared with three years ago, users spend less time on Yahoo sites, while time spent using Google and Facebook has increased.
Losing Sight Of Search
Analysts say Yahoo started to lose momentum when it took its focus off of search.
Tim Bajarin, a tech-industry analyst and futurist, says Yahoo tried to become a media company, a field where the competition was fierce and the money was not as good. Meanwhile, the company let other opportunities slip by.
If Yahoo wants a promising future, Bajarin says, it needs to find a leader who can help the company get back on track with what matters, and can make money.
"Whoever they bring in at this point, I believe, has to understand the new world of advertising and the new world of mobile, because that's where it's all headed," he says.
Bajarin says there are some things Yahoo still does well. It's still No. 2 in display ads that it serves up on other websites. Its finance, news and sports content sites are also very popular.
But if the company were to try to sell itself, it's not clear who would buy it.
Three years ago, Microsoft offered a hefty $45 billion to buy Yahoo. The deal fell through. Now, Yahoo is worth far less than half what Microsoft offered, and the two companies forged a search partnership that effectively gave Microsoft everything it wanted from Yahoo anyway.
Still, with a market value of $17 billion, the company is a pricey takeover target, which is why there is also talk that the company might break up into smaller pieces and sell off its Asian assets — including its share in Chinese search giant Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.
Yahoo said in its press release that the company is "evaluating possibilities and opportunities" but declined a request for additional comment.


text:
12,00 € inc. VAT
Through the cosmic mists it descends upon us, the new full-length album of atmospheric black metal/ambient act BRÒN: "Pred dverima noći" is here. Finding inspiration from the wilderness encountered on founder KG's voyage from his native New Zealand through Scotland and now Serbia, BRÒN's fifth LP is adorned with enthralling, majestic soundscapes and endless streams of melodies and harmonies, propelling the listener into the vast expanses beyond the conscious mind.
With three sprawling tracks all clocking in at over 15 minutes, "Pred dverima noći" spreads its mysterious, 90's-harkening blend of ethereal synths, harsh vocals, ferocious blast beats and thick atmosphere across the planes of time. If your musical preferences include the likes of LIMBONIC ART, EVILFEAST or DARKSPACE, look no further than BRÒN to bring you home.
1. Dverima noi
2. Usnulu zlobu razbudi
3. Zastore skrai
Orders contaning this release will start shipping on the 11th of December 2020.


text:
I have a couple deep cycle batteries that trickle charge from a solar panel, for emergency use. Right now the only way I get useful power from them is to use a 12VDC -> 120VAC inverter, e.g. the type that can hook up to a car battery.
I'd like to semi-permanently install the batteries in the basement and set up a couple 12-volt circuits for daily off-grid use. E.g. maybe installing some 12 volt LED lamps, or removing the wall warts on some of my electronics.
Is there any standard for wiring residential 12 volt circuits? Is it even legal? I can't find anything on wire gauge recommendations, outlet and plug shapes, etc. I've seen some generators, e.g. this one, have a 12VDC receptacle with two angled blades, but I can't find anything like that at the usual retailers and I'm not sure if that's a standard receptacle shape or not.
Does anyone have any experience or guidance on where to get started for 12-volt DC residential circuits?
(This is more a side project to help reduce my electric usage and take advantage of the solar panel I already have than a serious source of emergency power. I'm not interested in a generator.)


text:
Fluffernutter Muffins
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large banana, mashed
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
12 teaspoons marshmallow cream
1 ounce white chocolate, finely chopped (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 12-cup muffin pan with liners.
In a medium mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
In a large mixing bowl, using a mixer on medium speed, beat together banana, peanut butter, brown sugar and oil until creamy - about 1-2 minutes; beat in vanilla and egg until combined. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually beat in flour mixture, alternating with milk.
Divide 1/3 of the batter into muffin cup bottoms. Place a teaspoon of marshmallow cream into each center and top with remaining muffin batter. Evenly sprinkle white chocolate on tops.
Bake 20-22 minutes or until light golden brown and risen. Cool 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool.
Makes 12 muffins


text:
While I have made good progress on many of my Debian goals for this year, it's not the case for the goal number #1: translating my Debian book into English. The picture on the left is the cover of the current French version based on Debian Lenny (450 pages). But the translation would be based on the next edition that we're currently preparing and it's based on Debian Squeeze of course! We have already translated the table of contents so that you can get an idea of what's in the book. Note that many parts of the book apply to Ubuntu as well.
It's quite difficult for Roland and me to allocate several months of our life to such a huge task without any income in that period and without knowing if our book will sell enough to cover for the time invested. For those reasons, we're considering using a service like kickstarter.com or ulule.com or yooook.net to get this project funded.
If you don't know those services, they allow you to present your project and to collect pledges so that you can safely complete your project. The money pledged is distributed only if the total amount pledged exceeds the minimal funding level (set by the project creator). Furthermore you can select nice rewards depending on the amount of money pledged.
To make things even more exciting we are ready to publish the book under a DFSG-compatible license at the sole condition that we reach 25 000€ of donations. That might look like a lot but in fact it's only 5€ donated by 5000 persons and then everybody benefits! And for the authors, you have to remove ~10% of fees taken by the funding service (including card processing fees), 16.4% VAT, 9% social taxes and if you consider that the project represents a minimum of 6 months of work, that ends up to at most 2850 €/month. We believe this to be reasonable.
The next step for us is to pick the service to use and setup the fundraising. We need your input. Please answer a few questions by filling this form.
In all cases, we will have those rewards and probably more:
- the book in digital format (PDF, HTML, ePub) (between 5€ and 10€, price not fixed yet)
- the book as paperback (between 35€ and 50€, price not fixed yet)
- the paperback book with a dedication by (one of) the authors
A few considerations about the various services: Kickstarter.com is a great service but it's restricted to US-residents so it's complicated for us to use that service since we're French (and live in France) and the supporters need to have an Amazon (payments) account. Ulule.com is open to anyone for project creation but uses a paypal API to deal with the pledge mechanism and thus imposes that all supporters have a paypal account. Is that requirement likely to scare you away? Yooook.net is specialized in liberation fundraising but the interface is not very polished, they don't offer (many) social features nor do they give a public listing of the projects hosted.
The choice is difficult and thus we're seeking your feedback to make the right one, take a few minutes and answer our questions: click here to go to the form.
Thank you for your help and please spread the word so that we get enough answers to have meaningful results.
Update: it has been brought to my attention that kickstarter requires an Amazon (payments) account. I fixed my article and the form to document this.
I have also been asked what license we're going to use. It's likely to be dual-licensed GPL2+ / CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Update: The crowfunding campaign is now running on Ulule. Click here to see its project page.


text:
Let $G=(V,E)$ be an undirected graph with vertex set $V$ and edge set $E$. Let $A$ denote the adjacency matrix of $G$ and $D$ denote the diagonal matrix such that $D_{i,i}$ equals to the degree $d_i$ of vertex $i$. Then the Laplacian of $G$ is defined to be $L:=I-D^{-1/2}AD^{-1/2}$, which has $n$ nonnegative real eigenvalues, say, $0=\lambda_1\leq \lambda_2\leq \cdots\leq \lambda_n$.
Now for any vertex subset $S\subseteq V$, let $e(S,\bar{S})$ denote the number of edges between $S$ and its complement $\bar{S}$. Let $vol(S):=\sum_{v\in S}deg_v$ be the sum of degrees of vertices in $S$. Then the conductance (or Cheeger constant) $h_G$ of graph $G$ is defined to be $$h_G:=\min_{S\subseteq V}\frac{e(S,\bar{S})}{\min \{vol(S), vol({\bar{S}})\}}.$$
The Cheeger inequality relates the second smallest eigenvalue $\lambda_2$ of $L$ to the conductance $h_G$ as follows:
$$2h_G\geq\lambda_2\geq \frac{h_G^2}{2}.$$
The above inequality is known to be tight. For example, the left side of the inequlity is tight on the $d$-dimensional cube and the right side is tight on the $n$-vertex cycle. Thus, we do not hope to improve the inequality that applies to every graph.
My question is:
Is there any result which gives that for some special class of graphs, the Cheeger inequality has an improved form, say, $2h_G^{1.2}\geq\lambda_2\geq \frac{h_G^{1.5}}{2}$ for any $G\in\mathcal{C}$, where $\mathcal{C}$ is a set of graphs.
Ideally, we would hope that there is a nice tradeoff between the generality of the class $\mathcal{C}$ and the tightness of the Cheeger-type inequality. In another word, $\mathcal{C}$ contains a wide class of graphs and the upper bound is close to the lower bound.


text:
Welcome to the Evil Baby Glare-Off! If you think this isn't serious, check out the video below. These kids are not messing around.
The 32 kids in the video above were selected out of over 300 entries on the Mommy Shorts Facebook Fanpage, all aged 0-5. Then, I created a bracket spreading out the toughest competitors to make the tournament as exciting and unpredictable as possible.
I have no idea who will win. Last year, I never saw Lucie coming.
Want a printable version to help create an office pool? Click the image below to enlarge. I highly encourage it.
You'll also have an opportunity to predict THE FINAL FOUR for a chance to win an awesome prize from Piccolini in today's comment section.
1) Who moves on to the next round will be determined by reader vote. The poll is set up so you can only vote once. Each day this week, the pool will narrow until we are down to the final two on Friday. Winner will be announced on Monday, October 22nd.
2) Each day of the contest, there will be a surprise giveaway. All giveaways are open to everybody (as long as you are a Mommy Shorts Facebook Fan). You enter by leaving a comment below the post.
For more specific rules and prize package descriptions for the winners, click here.
Alright. Ready to get this thing started? VOTING STARTS NOW!
Voting ends tonight at 11pm EST. Winners will be pitted against each other tomorrow. May the evilest baby win!
Today's giveaway is an "I Pretzel NY" baby onesie or toddler t-shirt ($30-32), a pair of mini Wayfarer sunglasses ($14) and a toddler-sized fedora ($32), all from my favorite downtown NYC kid's shop— Piccolini. That's Mazzy modeling two of the three items up top.
The awesome "I Pretzel NY" onesies and t-shirts are exclusively designed and sold by Piccolini. The Wayfarers are perfect for sheilding the world from your child's evil glare. And if your kid can pull off a fedora, well, then he or she is way cooler than I will ever be.
All items can be purchased through Piccolini's online shop.
1) You must be a Mommy Shorts Facebook Fan to enter. If you are not one already, you can become one by clicking here.
2) Predict the FINAL FOUR evil babies in the comment section below. One winner will be chosen randomly from the people who guessed correctly.
3) This is not required BUT— please spread the word of the Evil Baby Glare-Off. Post a link on your facebook page, click "like" underneath the post, tweet about it, tell your dry cleaner, whatever. Just because that would be AWESOME, thank you.
All giveaway winners will be announced on Monday October 22nd, along with the winner of the glare-off.


text:
Note:- Please click on fare summary to know the complete details of your fare components. The fare shown is dependent on a pre-selected route, fixed one way Km's and might rise in case you decide to change the regular route. Click on Book Now to confirm your cab by making advance payment. Call 24x7 Customer Support at 8222873873 if there is any additional query regarding the fare.
Are you planning on a trip by road? But as you know hiring a car from Agra, Uttar Pradesh to Delhi can get very hectic especially if you do not planned in advance. Well we at Home Cabs Provide you this Agra to Delhi car rental service any time. You can also avail car rental services from Agra airport to Delhi.
Choosing Home Cabs for Agra to Delhi taxi services is the best option one can get in the city. Home Cabs provides you great facilities and timely services. You can now book your cabs service in Agra for Delhi in the easiest way by vising our website www.homecabs.com.
We at Home Cabs are committed for reliable, timely and quality cab service on Agra to Delhi route. We have provided great range of car options which you can choose for your taxi service Agra to Delhi.
Home Cabs is the best cab service provider in the on Yamuna Express Way, if you are planning to book Agra to Delhi cabs you should book with Home Cabs and you will get instant confirmation, huge variety of cars and the last but not least assured quality service. At Home Cabs you get the best deals for your Agra to Delhi cab package. To avail this exciting package, all you need to do is to make Agra to Delhi online cab booking at Home Cabs.
If you want to travel from Agra to Delhi and you have need Agra to Delhi taxi service then your search ends here. Because we provides Agra to Delhi Cab service in very reasonable rates or you can say that our Agra to Delhi taxi/cab fare is very Low. This service is also available for Agra airport to Delhi or Agra to Delhi Airport. Now we are providing car rental services to 70% of customer on Agra Delhi route. You can Get 50% Discount on this one way If you are Planning for Delhi by road from Agra and you need a car in Agra For Delhi than please make a call on Home Cabs Customer Care Number or Visit our website www.homecabs.com.
The best way to Delhi from Agra is Yamuna express way. This route is the best for Delhi from Agra Yamuna Expressway is a 6-lane Highway it is, 165 km long, controlled-access expressway. It Connects Greater Noida with Agra in Uttar Pradesh. It is India's longest six-lane controlled-access expressway stretch. It will take 150-180 Minutes to reach Agra from Delhi. The Cost of or toll charges from Agra to Delhi is Rs. 320 One side or Rs. 510 for both sides but it saver your 3 to 4 Hours' time in Round trip
Home Cabs provides you huge range on cabs for Agra To Delhi route. You can Book Swift for Agra to Delhi, Dezire for Agra to Delhi, Innova for Agra to Delhi, Tavera for Agra to Delhi, Tempo Traveler for Agra to Delhi
You can book Agra to Delhi car in affordable rates at Home Cabs. Home Cabs not only provides you the best in class cab service but our Agra to Delhi cab fare is also the most reasonable. Home Cabs focussed on his customer with highest level of customer service standards, our drivers are professionally trained to offer excellent services to travler. To book Agra to Delhi cabs at affordable rates, opting for Home Cabs is the best choice, Because we are committed to provide reasonable prices for your cab from Agra to Delhi. The Agra to Delhi cab package at Home Cabs is ensured to be affordable in terms of rates for the customers.
Use Home Cabs for a seamless booking experience and get affordable Agra to Delhi cab fare. To check taxi fare of Agra to Delhi; just go to the booking tab, click on One way (Fixid)and get your preferred car with an assurance of the best cab rates in Agra.
Other Popular Routes:


text:
The deepest economic crisis in eighty years prompted a shallow revival of Marxism. During the panicky period between the failure of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and the official end of the American recession in the summer of 2009, several mainstream journals, displaying a less than sincere mixture of broadmindedness and chagrin, hailed Marx as a neglected seer of capitalist crisis. The trendspotting Foreign Policy led the way, with a cover story on Marx for its Next Big Thing issue, enticing readers with a promise of star treatment: 'Lights. Camera. Action. Das Kapital. Now.'
Though written by a socialist, Leo Panitch, the piece was typical of the general approach to Marx and Marxism. It bowed at a distance to the prophet of capitalism's ever 'more extensive and exhaustive crises', and restated several basic articles of his thought: capitalism is inherently unstable; political activism is indispensable; and revolution offers the ultimate prize. This can't have done much more than jog memories of the Communist Manifesto, the only one of Marx's works cited by Panitch. The Manifesto remains an incandescent pamphlet, but the elements of a Marxian crisis theory, one never fully articulated by Marx himself, lie elsewhere, scattered throughout Theories of Surplus Value, the Grundrisse and above all the posthumous second and third volumes of Capital. Marx's brilliant and somewhat contradictory comments on the subject bring to mind Cioran's remark: 'Works die; fragments, not having lived, can no longer die.' Such shards sowed one of the most fertile fields in Marxist economics. Over recent decades, the landmarks of Marxian economic thinking include Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism (1972), David Harvey's Limits to Capital (1982), Giovanni Arrighi's Long 20th Century (1994) and Robert Brenner's Economics of Global Turbulence (2006), all expressly concerned with the grinding tectonics and punctual quakes of capitalist crisis. Yet little trace of this literature, by Marx or his successors, has surfaced even among the more open-minded practitioners of what might be called the bourgeois theorisation of the current crisis.
The term bourgeois will seem apt enough if we note that a recent and distinguished addition to the long shelf of books on the crisis, Nouriel Roubini's Crisis Economics, summons as its audience not only 'financial professionals', 'corporate executives' and 'students in business, economics and finance', but also – exhausting the list – 'ordinary investors'.1 No one, in other words, who is unmotivated by gain. Maybe it's to be expected, then, that the Marx celebrated by Roubini and his coauthor Stephen Mihm, in a résumé of earlier theorists of crisis, appears as a mere herald of continual disruption rather than as an economist who located at the heart of such crises the existence of bourgeois society as such, or the social cleavage between profit-seekers (financial professionals etc) and wage-earners: the fatal schism, in other words, between capital and labour. Roubini goes no further than to quote the same ringing lines of the Manifesto that appear in Foreign Policy. Here again is the resemblance of capitalism to 'the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells'. Credited with the alarming but vague insight that 'Capitalism is crisis,' Marx then departs the scene.
To date, a revived Keynesianism has formed a left boundary of economic debate in the press at large. Only specialised socialist journals have undertaken to diagnose capitalism's latest distemper in explicitly or implicitly Marxian terms. As for books on the crisis, until recently the jostling crowd of titles included no Marxist study, the exception to this rule, John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff's Great Financial Crisis, having been bolted together out of editorials from one of those socialist journals, the American Monthly Review.2 Not until now, with David Harvey's Enigma of Capital, have we had a book-length example of Marxian crisis theory addressed to the current situation.
Few writers could be better qualified than Harvey to test the continuing validity of a Marxian approach to crisis, a situation he helpfully defines – dictionaries of economics tend to lack any entry for the word – as 'surplus capital and surplus labour existing side by side with seemingly no way to put them back together'. (This is at once reminiscent of Keynes's 'underemployment equilibrium' and of the news in the daily papers: in the US, corporations are sitting on almost two trillion dollars in cash while unemployment hovers just below 10 per cent.) Harvey, who was born in Kent, is the author of the monumental Limits to Capital – a thoroughgoing critique, synthesis and extension of the several varieties of crisis theory underwritten by Marx's thought – and has been teaching courses on Marx, mainly in the US, for nearly four decades. His lectures on Volume I of Capital, available online, have become part of the self-education of many young leftists, and now supply the framework for his useful Companion to Marx's 'Capital'. (I sat in on his lectures at the City University of New York in the fall of 2007; a good Marxist, Harvey made no effort to find out whether any of us – too many for the available chairs – had registered and paid for the class.)
Since the publication of The Limits to Capital in the second year of the Reagan administration and at the dawn of what has come to be known as the financialisation of the world economy, the dual movement of Harvey's career has been to return time and again to Marx as a teacher, and to extend his own ideas into new and more empirical territory. The most substantial of his recent books, Paris, Capital of Modernity (2003), described the city's forcible modernisation by Baron Haussmann as a solution to structural crisis – 'The problem in 1851 was to absorb the surpluses of capital and labour power' – and situated this urban transformation within the renovation of Parisian humanity it induced. Harvey's other post-millennial volumes, The New Imperialism (also 2003), A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005) and now The Enigma of Capital, amount to a trilogy of self-popularisation and historical illustration, taking current events as a proving ground for what Harvey has called, referring to The Limits to Capital, 'a reasonably good approximation to a general theory of capital accumulation in space and time'.
The mention of space is considered. Harvey received his doctorate in geography rather than economics or history – his first, non-Marxist book was taken up with differing representations of space – and the whole thrust of his subsequent work, alert to the unevenness of capitalist development across neighbourhoods, regions and nation-states, has been to give a more variegated spatial texture to the historical materialism he would prefer to call 'historical-geographical materialism'. In a sense, the emphasis confirms Harvey's classicism. Marx himself somewhat curiously concluded the first volume of Capital – a book otherwise essentially concerned with local transactions between capital and labour, illustrated mostly from the English experience – with a chapter on the 'primitive accumulation' of land and mineral wealth attendant on the European sacking of the Americas. In the same way, Rosa Luxemburg, Marx's first great legatee in the theory of crisis, insisted in the Accumulation of Capital (1913) that imperial expansion across space must accompany capital accumulation over time. Without the prising open of new markets in the colonies, she argued, metropolitan capitalism would be unable to dispose profitably of its glut of commodities, and crises of overproduction doom the system.
It's not, however, until the last third of The Limits to Capital that the spatial implications of Harvey's project loom into view. The book starts as a patient philological reconstruction, from Marx's stray comments, of a Marxian theory of crisis. The method is fittingly cumulative as, from chapter to chapter, in lucid, mostly unadorned prose, Harvey adds new features to a simple model of the 'overaccumulation of capital'. And overaccumulation remains in his later work – including The Enigma of Capital – the fount of all crisis. The term may seem paradoxical: what could it mean for capital to overaccumulate, when the entire spirit of the system is, as Marx wrote, 'accumulation for accumulation's sake'? How could capitalism acquire too much of what it regards as the sole good thing?
Overaccumulated capital can be defined as capital unable to realise the expected rate of profit. Whether in the form of money, physical plant, commodities for sale or labour power (the latter being, in Marx's terms, mere 'variable capital'), it can only be invested, utilised, sold or hired, as the case may be, with reduced profitability or at a loss. Overaccumulation will then be variously reflected in money hoarded or gambled rather than invested; in underused factories or vacant storefronts; in half-finished goods or unsold inventories; and in idle workers, even as the need for all these things goes unmet. In such cases, the most basic of the contradictions Marx discovered in capitalism – between use value and exchange value – reasserts itself. For at times of crisis, it's not that too much wealth exists to make use of – in fact, 'too little is produced to decently and humanely satisfy the wants of the great mass' – but that 'too many means of labour and necessities of life are produced' to serve 'as means for the exploitation of labourers at a certain rate of profit'. A portion of the overaccumulated capital will then be devalued, until what survives can seek a satisfactory profitability again. Thus asset prices plunge, firms go bankrupt, physical inventories languish and wages are reduced, though this devaluation is no more equally divided among the respective social groups (rentiers, industrialists, merchants, labourers) than prosperity was during the good times.
On Harvey's account, standard in this respect, the risk of overaccumulation is intrinsic to the capitalist pursuit of 'surplus value'. The temptation is to say that surplus value is merely Marx's name for profit, but this would be to assume success where there is only speculation: surplus value (in commodities) can be realised as a profit (in money) only in the event of a sale, and this is the rub. A capitalist, in order to produce, must purchase both means of production (Marx's 'constant capital') and wage-labour (or 'variable capital'). After this outlay – C+V in Marx's formulation – the capitalist naturally hopes to possess a commodity capable of being sold for more than was spent on its production. The difference between cost of production and price at sale permits the realisation of surplus value. The production of any commodity, as well as the 'expanded reproduction' of the system itself, can thus be described by the further formula C+V+S: to a quantity of constant capital, or means of production, has been added a quantity of variable capital, or labour power, with a bonus of surplus value contained in the finished commodity.
The trouble is already there to see. Imagine an economy consisting of a single firm which has bought means of production and labour power for a total of $100, in order to produce a mass of commodities it intends to sell for $110, i.e. at a profit of 10 per cent. The problem is that the firm's suppliers of constant and variable capital are also its only potential customers. Even if the would-be buyers pool their funds, they have only their $100 to spend, and no more. Production of the total supply of commodities exceeds the monetarily effective demand in the system. As Harvey explains in The Limits to Capital, effective demand 'is at any one point equal to C+V, whereas the value of the total output is C+V+S. Under conditions of equilibrium, this still leaves us with the problem of where the demand for S, the surplus value produced but not yet realised through exchange, comes from.' An extra $10 in value must be found somewhere, to be exchanged with the firm if it is to realise its desired profit.
In this stylised scheme, with the entire capitalist economy figured as a single firm, the supplementary value can be produced only by the same firm and only in the future. The full cash value of today's product can therefore be realised only with the assistance of money advanced against commodity values yet to be produced. 'The surplus value created at one point requires the creation of surplus value at another point,' as Marx put it in the Grundrisse. How are these points, separated in space and time, to be linked? In a word, through the credit system, which involves 'the creation of what Marx calls "fictitious capital" – money that is thrown into circulation as capital without any material basis in commodities or productive activity'. Money values backed by tomorrow's as yet unproduced goods and services, to be exchanged against those already produced today: this is credit or bank money, an anticipation of future value without which the creation of present value stalls. Realisation (or the transformation of surplus value into its money equivalent, as profit) thus depends on the 'fictitious'.
Harvey is not adding to Marx here: his achievement is to piece a heap of fragments into a coherent mosaic. And for his reconstructed Marx, the end of capitalism – or at least its latest stage, of globally integrated finance – lies in its beginning. What is sometimes called the system's GOD imperative, for Grow Or Die, entails from the outset the development of finance as the earnest of future production. Finance and production, production and finance, can then chase each other's tail until together they have covered the entire world (or exhausted the tolerance of the working class). Marx proposed that 'the tendency to create the world market is directly given in the concept of capital itself,' and Harvey glosses the idea: 'The necessary geographical expansion of capitalism is … to be interpreted as capital in search for surplus value. The penetration of capitalist relations into all sectors of the economy, the mobilisation of various "latent" sources of labour power (women and children, for example), have a similar basis.' Hence both the involution and the imperialism of capital, commodifying the most intimate of formerly uncommodified practices (education, food preparation, courtship) as well as sweeping formerly non-capitalist regions (China and Eastern Europe) into the global market.
Marxist economic writing at its best praises the system it comes to bury in more dazzling terms than more apologetic accounts ever achieve, and Harvey's sardonic paean to 'the immense potential power that resides within the credit system' finds him at his most eloquent. For if it at first appeared from a logical point of view that capitalism must immediately founder in a crisis of overproduction and underconsumption it now appears that this problem enjoys a solution. Consider, Harvey suggests, 'the relation between production and consumption':
A proper allocation of credit can ensure a quantitative balance between them. The gap between purchases and sales … can be bridged, and production can be harmonised with consumption to ensure balanced accumulation. Any increase in the flow of credit to housing construction, for example, is of little avail today without a parallel increase in the flow of mortgage finance to facilitate housing purchases. Credit can be used to accelerate production and consumption simultaneously.
In the aftermath of the greatest housing bust in history, from Phoenix to Dublin to Dubai, that should sound an ominous note. Harvey goes on: 'All links in the realisation process bar one can be brought under the control of the credit system. The single exception is of the greatest importance.' Credit can co-ordinate the flow of economic value, but can't create it ex nihilo: 'There is no substitute for the actual transformation of nature through the concrete production of use values.'
In the case of real estate, it might happen – as it has – that more building and selling of houses has been financed than can actually be paid for with income deriving, in the last instance, from production. So the credit system that had seemed to insure against one kind of overaccumulation (of commodity capital) by advancing money against future production, now seems to have fostered another kind of overaccumulation (of fictitious capital) by promising more production than has occurred. More housing has been created than builders can sell at a profit; more mortgage debt has been issued than can be repaid, through wage income, to ensure the lenders' profit; homeowners who took out loans against the rising value of their property find that prices are instead plummeting; and with the collapse of the housing sector more money capital now lies in the hands of its owners than they can see a way to invest profitably.
'The onset of a crisis is usually triggered by a spectacular failure which shakes confidence in fictitious forms of capital,' Harvey writes, and everyone knows what happens next. The flow of credit, at one moment lavished to all comers on the flimsiest pretext of repayment, at the next more or less dries up. In the resulting conditions of uncertainty, those without ready cash, forced to cough it up anyway, can be pushed into fire-sales of their assets, while those who do have cash prefer to save rather than spend it, so that the economy as a whole sinks toward stagnation. So far, so familiar. But what explains the special liability of capitalism to crises of disappointed speculation? And why should real estate so often be their privileged object?
'Such speculative fevers are not necessarily to be interpreted as direct manifestations of disequilibrium in production,' Harvey says: 'They can and do occur on their own account.' Yet 'overaccumulation creates conditions ripe for such speculative fevers so that a concatenation of the latter almost invariably signals the existence of the former.' If capital has been overaccumulated, this means by definition that it can't easily find a profitable outlet in increased production. The resulting temptation, Harvey suggests, with his emphasis on finance, will be for capital to sidestep production altogether and attempt to increase itself through the multiplication of paper (or digital) assets alone. The question that goes all but unasked in the more respectable literature on the crisis, is why the opportunities for profitable investment looked so scarce in the first place.
If capitalist crises are crises of profitability, Marxian theory ascribes diminished opportunities for profit to one of three underlying conditions. First, a profit squeeze may be induced by the excessive wage bill of the working class, so that capitalists lack enough income to invest in new production on a scale compatible with growth. This line of thought takes inspiration from Marx's remark that wages are never higher than on the eve of a crash, and enjoyed a heyday of plausibility in the early 1970s, a bygone era of labour militancy, near full employment and high inflation, allegedly spurred by the so-called wage-price spiral. Robert Brenner disputes, however, that a profit squeeze imposed by labour truly afflicted the early 1970s, and doubts whether, given the superior mobility of capital over labour, such a profit squeeze could ever take hold over the long run; capital would simply relocate to more docile markets. At any rate, what Brenner calls the Full Employment Profit Squeeze thesis hardly appears to caption the current picture of high unemployment and stagnant real wages across the developed world.
A second condition is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as a result of the 'rising organic composition of capital', or in other words the penchant, given increased technological and organisational efficiency, for using relatively less labour than capital in production. Since profitability reflects the 'rate of exploitation' – or the ratio of the surplus value produced by the worker to the wages he receives – using less labour relative to capital diminishes profitability, unless capital goods become cheaper or exploitation is ramped up. This problem too can be solved, at least in principle: the capital/ labour ratio can simply be rejigged by deploying more labour relative to capital. Indeed, something like this has occurred on the grandest scale in recent decades, through the rough doubling of the amount of labour available to capital with the proletarianisation of huge populations in Eastern Europe and Asia. The effect, on one estimate, has been to reduce the global capital/labour ratio by 55-60 per cent.
Finally, and most plausibly today, theories of 'underconsumption' argue that capitalism lends itself to crisis because, by resisting wage growth, it deprives itself of the market, expanded by wage growth, it would need in order profitably to employ its swelling quantities of capital. Marx, in Volume II of Capital, is to the point: 'Contradiction in the capitalist mode of production: the labourers as buyers of commodities are important for the market. But as sellers of their own commodity – labour power – capitalist society tends to keep them down to the minimum price.' Of course 'a sufficient prodigality of the capitalist class', as Marx called it, could in principle maintain effective demand at a level consistent with the steady expansion of the system, by substituting luxury consumption for the satisfaction of the population at large.3 But this solution was never likely, for as Keynes observed, 'when our income increases our consumption increases also, but not by so much. The key to our practical problem is to be found in this psychological law.' The worldwide defeat of labour since the 1980s, leading the wage share of GDP to fall throughout the capitalist core, along with the persistent inability of the higher reaches of the capitalist class, in spite of their best efforts, to attain a level of expenditure proportionate to their wealth, makes an underconsumptionist analysis of the current crisis an appealing one, and suggests a possible convergence of Keynesian and Marxian views.
Marxists tend to battle each other, often in the heroic footnotes native to the tradition, over the merits or defects of these differing explanations of crisis. Harvey's own approach is catholic, all-encompassing. For him, the various strands of crisis theory represent, but don't exhaust, possible departures from a path of balanced growth in finance and production. What unites the strands is the fundamental antagonism between capital and labour, with their opposing pursuits of profits and wages. If there exists a theoretical possibility of attaining an ideal proportion, from the standpoint of balanced growth, between the amount of total social income to be reinvested in production and the amount to be spent on consumption, and if at the same time the credit system could serve to maintain this ratio of profits to wages in perpetuity, the antagonistic nature of class society nevertheless prevents such a balance from being struck except occasionally and by accident, to be immediately upset by any advantage gained by labour or more likely by capital.
So, as The Limits to Capital implies without quite stating, the special allure and danger of an elaborate credit system lie in its relationship to class society. If more capital has been accumulated than can be realised as a profit through exchange, owing perhaps to 'the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses' that Marx at one point declared 'the ultimate reason for all real crises', this condition can be temporarily concealed, and its consequences postponed, by the confection of fictitious values in excess of any real values on the verge of production. In this way, growth and profitability in the financial system can substitute for the impaired growth and profitability of the class-ridden system of actual production. By adding over-financialisation, as it were, to his model of overaccumulation, Harvey means to show how an initial contradiction between production and realisation later 'becomes, via the agency of the credit system, an outright antagonism' between the financial system of fictitious values and its monetary base, founded on commodity values. This antagonism then 'forms the rock on which accumulation ultimately founders'. In social terms, this will take the form of a contest between creditors and debtors over who is to suffer more devaluation.
The real originality of The Limits to Capital, however, is to add a new geographical dimension to crisis formation. Harvey goes about this via a theory of rent. One effect of the approach is to suggest why property speculation – with its value ultimately tied up in potential rental income – should be such a familiar capitalist perversion (in the psychoanalytic sense of overinvestment in one kind of object). Another is to convert an apparent embarrassment for Marxian theory into a show of strength. The would-be embarrassment lies in the evident difficulty of reconciling a labour theory of value with the price of unimproved land, given that land is obviously not a product of human labour. Harvey's bold and ingenious solution is to propose that, under capitalism, ground rent – or the proportion of property value attributable to mere location, rather than to anything built or cultivated on the land – becomes a 'pure financial asset'. Ground rent, in other words, is a form of fictitious capital, or value created in anticipation of future commodity production: 'Like all such forms of fictitious capital, what is traded is a claim on future revenues, which means a claim on future profits from the use of the land or, more directly, a claim on future labour.'
From the need to realise ground rent stems capitalism's whole geography of anxious anticipation. Capital overaccumulated in one place can flow to another which appears to boast better ultimate prospects of profit. Rising land values will shunt capital to new locations, at the same time that the resulting increase in rental costs compels a matching expansion of production, with its accompanying physical and social infrastructure. The relationship between credit and commodities is in this way translated into spatial terms as an uneasy rapport between one kind of capital, highly mobile or liquid, and another kind – 'fixed capital embedded in the land' – defined by its inertness. Here, in the latent conflict between migratory finance capital and helplessly stationary complexes of fixed capital, including not only factories and office buildings but roads, houses, schools and so on, Harvey has found a contradiction of capitalism overlooked by Marx and his heirs.
The contradiction may look at first like a brilliant solution to the problem of overaccumulation. Overaccumulated capital, whether originating as income from production or as the bank overdrafts that unleash fictitious values, can postpone any immediate crisis of profitability by being drawn off into long-term infrastructural projects, in an operation Harvey calls a 'spatio-temporal fix'. Examples on a grand scale would be the British boom in railway construction of the 1820s, the Second Empire modernisation of Paris, the suburbanisation of the US after World War Two, and the recent international pullulation of commercial and residential towers. In each case, a vast quantity of capital, faced with the question of profitability, could as it were postpone the answer to a remote date, since investments in infrastructure promise such delayed returns. Meanwhile, transformed spatial arrangements swap old trades for new ones – Harvey notes that Haussmann's Paris witnessed the extinction of the water-carrier and the advent of the electrician – or rejuvenate existing industries, like the postwar car manufacturers in the US.
Inevitably, the risk is that a given territory, as a complex of fixed capital, comes to prosper thanks to a stream of finance that one day flows elsewhere. A devaluation of the abandoned land along with its 'overaccumulated' workers, industries and infrastructure will ensue. This harsh sequel to the spatial fix Harvey calls a 'switching crisis', and in something like the climax of The Limits to Capital, he writes:
The more the forces of geographical inertia prevail, the deeper will the aggregate crises of capitalism become and the more savage will switching crises have to be to restore the disturbed equilibrium. Local alliances will have to be dramatically reorganised (the rise of Fascism being the most horrible example), technological mixes suddenly altered (incurring massive devaluation of old plant), physical and social infrastructures totally reconstituted (often through a crisis in state expenditures) and the space economy of capitalist production, distribution and consumption totally transformed. The cost of devaluation to both individual capitalists and labourers becomes substantial. Capitalism reaps the savage harvest of its own internal contradictions.
In The Enigma of Capital Harvey observes these contradictions sharpening over time, as finance capital becomes ever more mobile while beds of infrastructure grow increasingly Procrustean: 'The disjunction of the quest for hypermobility and an increasingly sclerotic built environment (think of the huge amount of fixed capital embedded in Tokyo or New York City) becomes ever more dramatic.'
So what then are the 'limits to capital'? Harvey's answer, disappointing as it is honest, is that a system bent on overaccumulation will not collapse of its own top-heaviness. Should the world market fail to generate the ever increasing surpluses that form its only rationale, it can always enlarge its borders and appropriate new wealth through what Marx called primitive accumulation and what Harvey proposes to call 'accumulation by dispossession', given that the process hardly ceased when the English peasantry was cleared off the land or the Inca Empire looted for its silver. The incorporation into the capitalist domain of non-capitalist territories and populations, the privatisation of public or commonly owned assets, including land, and so on, down to the commodification of indigenous art-forms and the patenting of seeds, offer instances of the accumulation by dispossession that has accompanied capitalism since its inception. This field for gain would be exhausted only with universal commodification, when 'every person in every nook and cranny of the world is caught within the orbit of capital.' Even then, the continuous 'restructuring of the space economy of capitalism on a global scale still holds out the prospect for a restoration of equilibrium through a reorganisation of the regional parts'. Spatial fixes and switching crises might succeed one another endlessly, in great floods and droughts of capital. Devaluation, being 'always on a particular route or at a particular place', might serially scourge the earth even as capital in general, loyal to no country, remained free to pursue its own advantage.
The real test of Harvey's 1982 theory of crisis is how well it serves in the face of the thing itself. The Enigma of Capital can be read as an effort to meet the challenge. Naturally, its success or failure depends on whether it can offer a more comprehensive and persuasive account than rival theories. On the score of comprehensiveness there can be little doubt that Harvey's work and that of other Marxists goes beyond the alternatives. 'The idea that the crisis had systemic origins is scarcely mooted in the mainstream media,' Harvey writes, and that might be extended to include even the trenchant work of the neo-Keynesians. The crisis, after all, is that of a capitalist system, and no account of it, however searching, can be truly systematic if it neglects to consider property relations: that is, the preponderant ownership of capital by one class, and of little or nothing but its labour power by another.
Paul Krugman, discussing Roubini's book in the New York Review of Books, agreed with him that what Ben Bernanke called the 'global savings glut' lay at the heart of the crisis, behind the proximate follies of deregulation, mortgage-securitisation, excessive leverage and so on. Originating in the current account surpluses of net-exporting countries such as Germany, Japan and China, this great tide of money flooded markets in the US and Western Europe, and floated property and asset values unsustainably. Why was so much capital so badly misallocated? In the LRB of 22 April 2010, Joseph Stiglitz observed that the savings glut 'could equally well be described as an "investment dearth"', reflecting a scarcity of attractive investment opportunities. Stiglitz suggests that global warming mitigation or poverty reduction offers new 'opportunities for investments with high social returns'.
The neo-Keynesians' 'savings glut' can readily be seen as a case of what a more radical tradition calls overaccumulated capital. But it is the broader and more systematic Marxist perspective that ultimately and properly contains Keynesianism within it, and a crude Marxist catechism may be in order. Where does an excess of savings come from? From unpaid labour – for example, that of Chinese or German workers. And why would such funds inflate asset bubbles rather than create useful investment? Because capital pursues not 'high social returns', but high private returns. And why should these have proved difficult to achieve, except by financial shell-games? Keynesians complain of an insufficiency of aggregate demand, restraining investment. The Marxist will simply add that this bespeaks inadequate wages, in the index of a class struggle going the way of owners rather than workers.
In The Enigma of Capital, Harvey coincides with other Marxists in locating the origins of the present crisis in the troubles of the 1970s, when the so-called Golden Age of capitalism following the Second World War – blessed with high rates of profitability, productivity, wage growth and expansion of output – gave way to what Brenner named 'the long downturn' after 1973. Brenner argued in The Economics of Global Turbulence that this long downturn, with deeper recessions and weaker expansions across every business cycle, reflects chronic overcapacity – another variety of overaccumulation – in international manufacturing, a condition brought about by the maturation of Japanese and German industry by the end of the 1960s, and later compounded by the industrialisation of East Asia. As competition to supply export markets increased faster than those markets expanded, the price of international tradeables naturally fell, reducing both the profits of manufacturers and the wages paid to workers. Such impaired profitability moreover discouraged further investment in production, so that finance capital turned increasingly to speculation in asset values. Yet this view, however formidably presented, doesn't appear to have won general assent. Harvey, content to follow Brenner elsewhere, inclines towards a more conventional profit-squeeze explanation of the crisis of the early 1970s.
About the sequel to that crisis there is less dispute. Whether or not high wages had undermined profitability, a subsequent effort to curb wages, carried out at gunpoint in the Southern Cone in the mid-1970s, and achieved by ballot under Thatcher and Reagan before spreading to other wealthy countries, eventually resulted in a systemic shortage of demand. In this way, capital's victory over labour set the stage for a later reversal. In The Enigma of Capital, Harvey charts the dialectical switch in the blunt style he now favours:
Labour availability is no problem now for capital, and it has not been for the last 25 years. But disempowered labour means low wages, and impoverished workers do not constitute a vibrant market. Persistent wage repression therefore poses the problem of lack of demand for the expanding output of capitalist corporations. One barrier to capital accumulation – the labour question – is overcome at the expense of creating another – lack of a market. So how could this second barrier be circumvented?
The lack of demand was of course appeased by recourse to fictitious capital: 'The gap between what labour was earning and what it could spend was covered by the rise of the credit card industry and increasing indebtedness.' It was not only consumers who indentured themselves. As Bellamy Foster and Magdoff point out in The Great Financial Crisis, total US debt, owed by government, corporations and individuals, equalled approximately 125% of American GDP during the 1970s. By the mid-1980s the proportion had increased to two to one, and by 2005 stood at almost three and a half to one. Much of the cheap credit, originating in East Asia and flowing through the Federal Reserve, came to promote a property bubble of historic dimensions. 'The demand problem,' Harvey writes, 'was temporarily bridged with respect to housing by debt-financing the developers as well as the buyers. The financial institutions collectively controlled both the supply of, and demand for, housing!'
It can't be said that Harvey comes late to recognising the housing bubble's absurdity. In The New Imperialism, from 2003, he recapitulated his theory of the spatial fix, and warned that while some spatial fixes ultimately relieve crises through the elaboration of new physical and social infrastructure, others merely postpone them. After listing several of the more spectacular property-market collapses of the long downturn (worldwide in 1973-75; Japanese in 1990; Thai and Indonesian in 1997), Harvey added that
the most important prop to the US and British economies after the onset of general recession in all other sectors from mid-2001 onwards was the continued speculative vigour in the property and housing markets and construction. In a curious backwash effect, we find that some 20 per cent of GDP growth in the United States in 2002 was attributable to consumers refinancing their mortgage debt on the inflated values of their housing and using the extra money they gained for immediate consumption (in effect, mopping up overaccumulating capital in the primary circuit). British consumers borrowed $19 billion in the third quarter of 2002 alone against the value of their mortgages to finance consumption. What happens if and when this property bubble bursts is a matter for serious concern.
Not only Americans and Britons but the Irish, Spanish and Emiratis live today among the ruins of a broken spatial fix.
What, if any, switching crisis does this presage? To keep things simple, imagine the world economy of recent years as consisting of two capitalist countries – represented by the US and China – in both of which the working class, employed or unemployed, received too little of the total product for capital not to overaccumulate and risk massive devaluation. Chinese workers, deprived by wage repression and social insecurity (such as lack of health insurance) of the opportunity to consume much of their own output, saw the wealth accumulated through their labour go, in the form of their own savings and the income of their bosses, towards the construction of new productive capacity in their own country and a property boom in the other country. Both the new factories at home, turning out exports for the US, and the deliriously appreciating houses abroad rested on the premise of continuously rising American incomes. But among Americans, wage growth had ceased and household incomes could no longer be supplemented by the mass entry of women into the workforce, something already accomplished. The issuance and securitisation of debt alone could substitute for present income. But in the end so much fictitious capital could not be redeemed. Whatever the destination of future Chinese savings gluts, they can no longer sponsor American consumption in the same way.
In his final book, Adam Smith in Beijing (2007), the late Giovanni Arrighi expanded on Harvey's concepts of the spatial fix and the switching crisis to survey half a millennium of capitalist development and to peer into a new, probably Chinese century. In Arrighi's scheme of capitalist history, there had been four 'systemic cycles of accumulation', each lasting roughly a century and each organised on a larger scale than the one before, with a new polity at the centre: a Genoese-Iberian cycle; a Dutch cycle; a British cycle; and an American one. A systemic cycle's first phase, of material expansion, came to an end when the central power had accumulated more capital than established trade and production could absorb. This was followed by a second, financial phase of expansion in which capital overaccumulated at the centre of the system promoted a new nucleus of growth. Ultimately the rising centre came to finance the expenditures, often on war, that the old and now declining centre could no longer cover out of its mere income.
It fits Arrighi's scheme that the US, having (along with the Chinese diaspora) once led international capital onto the Asian mainland, had now become dependent on Chinese credit. For him, this announced the greatest switching crisis of all time, as China prepared to assume the hegemonic role being reluctantly relinquished by the US, and to inaugurate a new cycle of accumulation. Such a succession might ideally yield a new commonwealth of civilisations, in which capitalism as we know it gave way to what Arrighi somewhat hazily envisaged as a non-capitalist market economy recuperating old Chinese traditions of self-centred development. One condition of this happy scenario was that the US abandon its armed imperialism and China remain committed to its 'peaceful rise'; another, that the Chinese pioneer a green mode of growth distinct from 'the Western, capital intensive, energy consuming path'. Otherwise inter-imperial war, the ultimate means of competitive devaluation in The Limits to Capital, loomed once more.
In the recently published Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth, John Bellamy Foster and his Marxist co-authors refer to the identification by a group of scientists, including the leading American climatologist James Hansen, of nine 'planetary boundaries' that civilisation transgresses at its peril.4 Already three – concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, loss of nitrogen from the soil and the extinction of other species – have been exceeded. These are impediments to endless capital accumulation that future crisis theories will have to reckon with. Harvey's intuition of the ultimate demise of capitalism has also taken on an ecological colouring. 'Compound growth for ever' – historically, for capitalism at about 3 per cent a year – 'is not possible,' he declares in The Enigma of Capital, without much elaboration. The classical economists long ago foresaw that an economy defined by constant expansion would one day give way to what John Stuart Mill called the 'stationary state'. The idea has gained a new currency in Marxist writing of recent years, and in its contemporary version tends to locate the limits to growth in the depletion of natural resources or in the exhaustion of productivity gains as the share of manufacturing in the world economy shrinks and that of services expands. Of course, peak oil or soil exhaustion might easily coincide with faltering productivity. Harvey doesn't spell out why growth must have a stop, and the outlines of an ecologically stable and politically democratic future socialism remain as blurry in his later work as they do almost everywhere else. At the moment Marxism seems better prepared to interpret the world than to change it. But the first achievement is at least due wider recognition, which with the next crisis, or subsequent spasm of the present one, it may begin to receive.
Send Letters To:
The Editor
London Review of Books,
28 Little Russell Street
London, WC1A 2HN
Please include name, address, and a telephone number.


text:
A spokesperson for BC Ferries described the first weekend subject to new COVID-19 travel restrictions as smooth and without an incidents.
Deborah Marshall, BC Ferries' executive director, public affairs, marketing and customer experience, said staff denied a "handful of customers" travel on the six routes that cross the regional zones as per the provincial order. Marshall later said the actual number ranged from four to seven.
"There was no need to call authorities," she said. "It was more a matter of a few people not being fully aware of the order."
The ban effective since Friday until May 25 divides the province into three major travel regions based on the five provincial health regions and prohibits non-essential travel between them.
The trio consists of Vancouver Island (Vancouver Island Health), Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley (Fraser Health and Vancouver Coastal Health) and Northern-Interior (Northern Health and Interior Health, including Bella Coola Valley, the Central Coast and Hope).
The provincial government said the goal of the order is educational. If the restrictions need to be enforced, people not obeying may be subject to a $575 fine from police. Departments may set up periodic road checks at key travel corridors during times linked with leisure travel to remind travellers of the order.
The order sees BC Ferries ask travellers if their passage is essential and non-essential travellers will be asked not to board vessels headed to a different region.
BC Ferries will also suspend adding extra sailings during weekends, holidays and peak travel periods and notify all travellers with reservations that the travel order is in place and allow cancellations free of charge.
Marshall said traffic across the fleet continues to drop.
RELATED: B.C.'s COVID-19 non-essential travel ban takes effect, $575 fines approved
On the Tsawwassen-to-Swartz Bay route, passenger numbers dropped 34 per cent while vehicle numbers dropped 24 per cent over the weekend compared to last weekend. "Compared to 2019, we were down 82 per cent in passengers and 65 per cent in vehicles," she said.
On the Horseshoe Bay-to-Departure Bay route, passenger numbers dropped 42 per cent while vehicle numbers dropped 37 per cent this weekend compared to last weekend. "Compared to 2019, we were down 77 per cent in passengers and 64 per cent in vehicles," she said.
On the Tsawwassen-to-Duke Point route, passenger numbers dropped 17 per cent while vehicle numbers dropped seven per cent this weekend compared to last weekend. "Keep in mind, a lot of commercial traffic (essential travel) usually uses this route," she said. "Compared to 2019, we were down 74 per cent in passengers and 60 per cent in vehicles."
While Marshall said she lacked specific numbers, many customers have been contacting BC Ferries to cancel their bookings. "Our traffic is down significantly, which means British Columbians are heeding the order and advise to avoid non-essential travel at this time," she said.
For more news from Vancouver Island and beyond delivered daily into your inbox, please click here.
Do you have a story tip? Email: firstname.lastname@example.com.
Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and like us on Facebook.


text:
Rare variant of pemphigus vulgaris, a chronic vesiculobullous disease characterized by flaccid intraepidermal bullae and persistent erosions. Pemphigus vegetans starts at an earlier age, there is predominance of facial and intertriginous lesions, and denuded areas heal with hypertrophic verrucoid granulations. Two types exist: The more common Neumann type and the Hallopeau type, that features pustules as the predominant primary skin lesions rather than bullae.
Pemphigus Vegetans
Dermatitis vegetans, Pemphigus vegetans, Pyoderma vegetans, Pyoderma, vegetans, Pyodermia, vegetans


text:
After 13 years of excavation of the nearly complete skeleton of the Australopithecus fossil named Little Foot, researchers conclude that it is probably around 3 million years old, refute previous dating claims that suggested it is younger.
The Sterkfontein caves of Gauteng, South Africa have been world famous since 1936 for producing large numbers of fossils of the ape-man Australopithecus. However, for sixty years, these fossils consisted only of partial skulls and jaws, isolated teeth and fragments of limb bones. These were obtained by blasting or drilling and breaking of the calcified ancient cave infill or by pick and shovel excavation of the softer decalcified infills.
Questions arose about the age of these fossils, of how they came to be in the caves, and also of how a complete skeleton would appear. Then in 1997 Professor Ron Clarke from the University of the Witwatersrand, Stephen Motsumi and Nkwane Molefe of the University of the Witwatersrand discovered an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton with skull embedded in hard, calcified sediment in an underground chamber of the caves.
Left foreharm and hand of Little Foot. Credit: Wits Unversity.
They began to carefully excavate this skeleton in order to expose it in place in the cave and to understand the ancient processes that contributed to its burial and preservation.
This was the first time that such an excavation of an Australopithecus has taken place in an ancient calcified deposit. During the course of this excavation, it became clear that the skeleton had been subjected to ancient disturbance and breakage through partial collapse into a lower cavity and that calcareous flowstone had subsequently filled voids formed around the displaced bones.
Despite this fact being published, some other researchers dated the flowstones and claimed that such dates represent the age of the skeleton. This has created a false impression that the skeleton is much younger than it actually is.
Little Foot: CREDITS Laurent Bruxelles Inrap
A French team of specialists in the study of limestone caves, Laurent Bruxelles, Richard Maire and Richard Ortega, together with Clarke and Dominic Stratford of Wits University, have now shown that the dated flowstones filled voids formed by ancient erosion and collapse and that the skeleton is therefore older, probably considerably older, than the dated flowstones.
Little Foot is probably around 3 million years old, and not the 2.2 million years that has been wrongly claimed by other researchers. The skeleton has been entirely excavated from the cave and the skull, arms, legs, pelvis and other bones have been largely cleaned of encasing rock.
Professor Clarke has concluded from study of the skull that it belongs to Australopithecus prometheus, a species named by Professor Raymond Dart in 1948 on fragmentary ape-man fossils from Makapansgat in what is now Limpopo Province.
Thus at Sterkfontein, there existed two species of ape-man, Australopithecus africanus (for example, Mrs Ples) and Australopithecus prometheus, many specimens of which have been identified by Clarke from two deposits at Sterkfontein.